For countless generations the soil has been cultivated in connection with the growing of plants for food, but in addition, many gardens are maintained by way of beautification of a landscape. For whatever the reason the soil is cultivated, it has usually been necessary for the farmer or gardener to maintain several different tools on hand, so that the soil can be tilled in a manner commensurate with soil conditions, the weather and the like. Although a large variety of power tools have been available for use for many years, there is still an ample basis for almost every home having manually operated implements such as rakes, hoes, shovels and the like.
It is well known that some rakes, often referred to as stone rakes, have a spaced series of hard tines of relatively short length, whereas other rakes, typically called leaf rakes, have a series of long, relatively flexible tines. The tines of a stone rake are ideal for pulling through the soil in order to obtain a smoothing and combing function. A stone rake also is useful for pulling up unwanted weeds, small stones and the like from the soil.
While tools of this type provide substantial benefit in cultivating soil and work very satisfactorily in most instances, their use in various combinations to cultivate soil is often inconvenient in that a variety of tools must be carried to and from the work location, and must thereafter be carefully placed away from the work area to avoid injury to the worker. In addition, substantial time is often lost in switching among such an array of cultivating tools.
Further, many homes have only a single car garage or other rather limited storage location for tools, making it highly desirable to minimize the number of tools that must be stored.
One prior art attempt to develop a multiple use tool is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,025,621 in which a bow-rake is formed with a miniature hoe blade on one end, a two-prong pick on an opposite end and a sifter formed as an extended portion of the support member for the tines of the rake. The sifter is the same width as the rake and extends oppositely from the rake tines about the length of the tines. This tool has the disadvantage that the hoe is awkward and small due to its attachment at the end of the tool, i.e., the tool is turned on its side to use the hoe and the balance is lost. Further, the bow-rake construction is inappropriate for a tool to be used for chopping as is common for a hoe. Attempts to use the sifter as a hoe are disingenuous due to both the broad width of the sifter and the shallow depth that can be achieved if the sifter is used for chopping at weeds. Still further, the attachment of a bow-rake to a handle is conventionally done by forcing the bow or yoke ends into an undersized aperture in the end of handle 12. Repeated use, particularly in a hoeing fashion, rapidly expands the aperture allowing the tool to slip from the handle.
It is for reasons such as these that I have designed a highly useful single piece rake-hoe combination of sturdy, yet inexpensive, construction.